Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is closing in on Donald Trump in the key US battleground of Georgia - hoping to flip a third state from the Republicans and put himself within touching distancing of the White House.
Mr Biden is some 31,000 votes behind - a much smaller gap than the 372,000 he trailed behind by 24 hours ago - as counting continues in a series of knife-edge elections.
But his fortunes have begun slipping away in Arizona - one of his highly-prized targets in the southern Sun Belt.
There, the race has tightened to give Mr Biden a lead of just 79,000.
Only a handful of so-called 'toss-up' states are left in play as he and Donald Trump vie for the crucial 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the US presidency.
So far, Mr Biden is the closest on 253 - also leading in the popular vote and breaking the record for the most number of votes ever cast for a presidential candidate.
Mr Trump has 214 electoral college votes, also surpassing the number of total people who backed him in 2016 by more than three million.
Despite election administrators appeals for patience and calm, the stakes have been significantly raised by Mr Trump's campaign launching legal challenges.
'Poll watchers' have amassed outside some counts as they chant and demand access to the counting halls, while protests against Mr Trump raged in New York and Pennsylvania.
Protesters march to demand every vote be counted in the US election in Chicago, as President Donald Trump tries to stop the effort in key battleground states. Picture by: Ashlee Rezin Garcia/AP/Press Association ImagesThreat of legal action
And the president himself has threatened to take his fight to the US Supreme Court, with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani wildly speculating, without evidence, that Mr Biden may have voted illegally 5,000 times.
Mr Trump himself has already claimed victory in the election overall and in states where no result has been announced - Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
But speaking from Delaware, where he hoped to be able to make a victory speech on election night, Mr Biden on Wednesday told supporters it is "clear" he is on course to win.
"I'm not here to declare that I've won," he said, but pointed out that in undeclared races, he is leading by more votes than Mr Trump won them by at the last election.
He added: "We the people will not be silenced; we the people will not be bullied; we the people will not surrender."
Despite his confidence, Mr Biden will likely be disappointed he did not take an earlier, convincing lead once the results began trickling in.
He failed to capture swing states such as Florida and Ohio that would have already cemented his position, and fell short of taking "ruby red" Texas under the landslide some pollsters had forecasted.
But Mr Biden did gain momentum with his first major successes on Wednesday, taking Wisconsin and Michigan, according to several projections.
In a bid to thwart that, Mr Trump accused his opponents of a "major fraud" and launched two lawsuits, also demanding a recount in Wisconsin.
"How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?" he wrote, as part of a series of tweets trying to cast doubt over the election process.
Twitter then stepped in to flag several his messages, warning readers: "Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process."
A Joe Biden mural painted in Ballina, CO Mayo. Picture by: Henry McKeanBallina's Biden
It comes as locals in the Mayo town of Ballina have said the whole community is behind Joe Biden for US president.
Mr Biden's great-great-great grandfather, Edward Blewitt, left the town during the Great Famine.
One local man told Henry McKean: "Biden is a son of Ballina, I think it was his great grandfather came from here.
"But there's a serious aspect to this as well - because it's very important that Trump doesn't continue to lead the free world for another four years.
"He's a misogynist and a racist.
"I've a son here of 15, he'll be a young man by the time this term of the presidency in America is over, and it's very important for us that Biden wins it".
Another man, Owen Duffy, said: "This is a massive, massive boost for Ballina in the middle of the pandemic.
"It's given us such hope and a great boost of excitement - and you see the cavalcade going around the town [which] really shows that the whole of Ballina is behind Biden for this election".
While on Wednesday, president of Irish-American lobby group the Irish National Caucus said if Mr Trump wins another four year term as US president, America "may not recover for another 100 years".
Father Sean McManus told Newstalk Breakfast: "If Trump wins another four years, America is in profoundly serious trouble and may not recover for another 100 years.
"And I don't know if people at home in Ireland, and Dublin, realise the seriousness of it."
Additional reporting : Jack Quann
